51 comments:

That we had an evil president who burned those people to death does not excuse their acts.

Yes, we should prosecute Bill Clinton, but we won't. We can kill those that attack our embassies, but we won't. We can act like we support freedom of religion, but we have established theocracies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So maybe this imam has a point, but I'd still like to do what's right and protect our interests and promote freedom and pointing out the stye in our eye while ignoring the log in his own is not an acceptable response on his part.

So, in addition to being our first black President, he was also our first Moslem President?

(man, this is getting confusing; Willie's the first black Moslem and Choom's the first gay female; I though that was Hillary (no, she was only Co-President and Healthcare Czarina); so what does that make Moochelle?)

In Waco we got a real taste of the militarization of civilian police, FBI and ATF. The trend continued.

We got to see a simple firearms case morph into a child abuse case. The same way we got to see riots for the release of the blind Iman, the victory lap over the killing of Bin Laden for three day at the RNC convention morph into a film trailer for a film that no one has seen.

First, a few caveats. For starters, television images can magnify (and empower) crazies. In Libya, the few jihadis who killed Ambassador Chris Stevens were vastly outnumbered by the throngs of Libyan mourners who apologized afterward.

I'm not sure Kristof appreciates that television images don't just magnify and empower crazies -- they give us a distorted view of everything. We know that the tiny team that assassinated our ambassador was outnumbered by the mourners, but the fact that there were lots of mourners tells us absolutely nothing whatsoever about the relative degrees of support, in Libya, for and against assassination of American diplomats. The new Libyan government, to its credit, offered us support, but that tells us little about what the population as a whole thinks.

We had a similar problem with media coverage of the Egyptian protests, where initially, it kind of looked like they were sympathetic modern sorts, but a quick look past the superficial media visuals revealed that democracy would empower a peasant population which overwhelmingly supports the death penalty for apostasy. And that's more or less the kind of government we got, once the generals lost power.

I'd be surprised if the BATF knew or cared what the details of the Koresh cult's beliefs were. I suspect they were less patient with the cult's firearms violations because they had a knee-jerk instinct to distrust a compound full of people with strong religious beliefs, no matter what sort, particularly if the beliefs were not associated with a noticeable electoral bloc.

Paco, great Unknown, I don't understand why you're talking past each other. Only a grassy-knoll-flat-Earth-Area-51-Comic-Con-season ticket holder would think that the Waco disaster was intended to punish blasphemers. It was a terrible mistake and a strategic lunacy, but it had nothing to do with blasphemers. If we burned blasphemers, we could fuel power plants for years with the liberals in the Northeast alone.

Once again, here is an example about how our internal political and cultural controversies and events can be (and often are) completely misinterpreted overseas. This might be a warning to us about how we might misinterpret overseas events, but I also like to think we Americans generally aren't as pig-ignorant as this Imam probably is.

Firehand said...Now that's a kind of blowback I never expected to hear on Waco

===================Ha! The Imam has a fine example to throw in our faces and listen to the sputtering!Rather than just arrest Korest on one of his frequent trips into town, the BTAF decided to raid a "strange religious cult" because The Heroes of Law Enforcement thought going in hot and hard on the crazies would show their Heroism and result in awards, promotions, more funding.

When they were met with lethal force resistance to their lethal force, the situation became all about "Justice for the Fallen Heroes of Law Enforcement" and "Saving the Children"..

The FBI took over to "rescue the children and bring the perps to justice".

We all know what happened.

Then Oklahoma City as a direct payback.

And 20 years later an imam in a foreign land can legitimately cite it as a case of infidels roasting apostates. Such was the magnitude of the fuck up.

Firehand said...Now that's a kind of blowback I never expected to hear on Waco

===================Ha! The Imam has a fine example to throw in our faces and listen to the sputtering!Rather than just arrest Korest on one of his frequent trips into town, the BTAF decided to raid a "strange religious cult" because The Heroes of Law Enforcement thought going in hot and hard on the crazies would show their Heroism and result in awards, promotions, more funding.

When they were met with lethal force resistance to their lethal force, the situation became all about "Justice for the Fallen Heroes of Law Enforcement" and "Saving the Children"..

The FBI took over to "rescue the children and bring the perps to justice".

We all know what happened.

Then Oklahoma City as a direct payback.

And 20 years later an imam in a foreign land can legitimately cite it as a case of infidels roasting apostates. Such was the magnitude of the fuck up.

The people in Waco were killed because civilians with no tactical experience in the Clinton Administration called the shots--probably George Stephanopoulos, but he'd never admit it.

From listening devices, the FBI team had learned that David Koresh was writing his final "gospel" and that it would take a week. Expert consultants brought in by the FBI wanted to tell Koresh that he had a week to leave the compound and then hit the compound with a full-on assault by elite forces with flash-bangs that very Sunday. They felt they had to act because they knew that Koresh had a "doomsday" plan in place with explosives and incendiaries. The FBI had noticed that whenever the Branch Davidians were given a deadline, the guards at the compound slacked off in the beginning--usually falling asleep.

Someone at the White House scrapped the plan because it involved lying to the Davidians and that would work against the Clinton administration in the Press. Also some people could be hurt--broken eardrums from the flash-bangs. That would not play well with the press if the injured were children. The WH wanted to use tear gas while the experts told them that that was dangerous given the "doomsday" devices. The WH people said that was silly. They wouldn't be able to act with the tear gas (even though the FBI warned them that they had bought gas masks.)

One of those tactical consultants told that story on the WLS radio talk show the morning it happened. He was on his way back home passing through Chicago. The liberal talk show host asked the newsman if there was any activity at the compound and the newman said there were some reports of FBI movement. The liberal host said to the caller that he could be anyone, some joker just making stuff up. He then said how wonderful it was to how someone like Clinton in the White House that would not want to lie and that uses common sense. If what he was saying were true.

WLS should have the tape. I've called them before and told them but they had no interest in looking it up.

It is interesting that you mentioned the Branch Davidians. I just took my wife and son to view the small memorial at the site put up by private citizens. There is a list of those killed by the government, including the children. The Branch Davidians have built chapel at the site and in addition to the memorial of their own slain, they have installed a memorial stone in front of the chapel dedicated to those killed at the Murrah building bombing. It asks us to pray for the victims killed in Okalhoma City.

A few weeks ago, we were in Oklahoma City, and viewed the grand memorial there. It is sobering, how differently the nation treats deaths caused by the government, vs. those caused by citizen rebels.

Some of you have missed the point. It wasn't Christianity and Jesus that was blasphemed against by the Branch Davidians.

It was the Infallible Federal Government, that religious cult of the Left, which was blasphemed. The BD, however weird they may have been religiously, probably weren't any worse than lots of cults and sects still not-carbonized by Federal forces yet. But they had the audacity to think themselves free to make their own decisions, even after someone in authority said otherwise.

It was too much of an insult against the gods of coercive utopianism. After the fact, and with virtually no survivors to contradict, the official meme will point to just about anything they can dream up to justify the massacre.

Kristof notes: A group called Muslims for Progressive Values noted a story in Islamic tradition in which Muhammad was tormented by a woman who put thorns in his path and went so far as to hurl manure at his head as he prayed. Yet Muhammad responded patiently and tolerantly. When she fell sick, he visited her home to wish her well.

It's true this story and many other are in The Traditions (Hadiths), not the Quran, and are the stories of Muhammad as the "perfect man" whom every Muslim should emulate. These stories fit very nicely with the early Quran that does teach love for one's fellows and kindness to strangers. But, that part of the Quran has been abrogated by the later verses speaking of killing, booty, destruction, jizya, and allowing all forms of inhumanity and evils to be meted out to infidels, blasphemers, and insulters.

The Quran is the revealed word of Allah and trumps anything said of or exhibited by Muhammed.

ruralcounsel: It was the Infallible Federal Government, that religious cult of the Left, which was blasphemed.

Is there some point here in wandering off into the territory of non-literal uses of the word "blaspheme"? When the imam said "blaspheme", he meant "blaspheme", literally, no interpretation, woolly analogies, and flights of metaphorical fancy necessary.

If you want to talk about the abuse of federal power at Waco, then talk about the abuses of federal power at Waco. The imam was not making some subtle sophisticated analogy about what's "worshipped" East or West. He was making an ignorant comment about what he had taken to be a simple fact, a literal truth. If you're not getting that, you're not getting anything of relevance about this story.

Paco, I don't know what you have against figurative language. No, I didn't mean that it was literally blasphemy against the federal government, but I didn't expect to have to explain that to any one but a complete idiot. It was an allusion to those who hold the federal government in such high regard that to judge it one's enemy is to commit blasphemy against it. Got it? Or do I have to explain it in smaller words?

Tyrone Slothrop: No, I didn't mean that it was literally blasphemy against the federal government, but I didn't expect to have to explain that to any one but a complete idiot. It was an allusion to those who hold the federal government in such high regard that to judge it one's enemy is to commit blasphemy against it.

For somebody who's dissing somebody else for their alleged deficiencies in verbal comprehension, you seem to have missed the context here. The imam wasn't using the word allusively. Paco wasn't misunderstanding everybody else's allusive usage of the word, everybody else was misapprehending the imam's literal use of the word.

The raid on the BD camp in Waco...ahhh...good times. Shooting women holding babies in the head...burning almost 100 people to death...taking children whose mother had died getting them to this country, and shipping their little beaner ass back to a communist dictator...good times. I can see why D's have such a love of Slick Willie.

And in light of these great achievements in democracy, I can't understand why people would be suspect that Deutchland Security has purchased 700 million(that's millions with a "M", not trillions with a "T" for our liberal friends).

What could possibly go wrong?(other than a certain facist president declaring martial law, and himself "El Presidente" for life).

The Branch Davidians were a cult, no doubt. What amazes me is the extent to which leftists went to protect that man, Bill Clinton, and his administration from culpability. The original search warrant was granted based on LEGAL purchases of gun parts that "could" be turned into automatic weapons. Was there ever any indication of automatic weapon fire from the Davidians?

So maybe they were a crappy cult, who deserved what they got. What about YFZ ranch? These people had their children stolen by Texas CPS based on an illegal oath, from Rozita Swinton.

Will Crack recognize that, while the cults were bad, the government was worse?